Notes from an Urban Cabin #17 | The miraculous Coleman camping salt and pepper shaker (from the Drafts folder)
I hope y'all don't mind something from the Drafts folder. Apparently this was written the first week of December 2015 in the first urban cabin, that 385-square-foot studio apartment in Little Rock.
Note to self: buy eggs.
I fried the last two this morning, because last night I read somewhere on the Internet that people who eat eggs for breakfast lose weight faster than people who eat bagels. (I might have counteracted it by putting those fried eggs between toast.) Really, I love eggs, and they are quick to make, and I am choosing to believe any science or conventional wisdom that tells me it is right and good to eat eggs in the morning.
I am not one to heavily salt or pepper my food. The 3-inch-tall Coleman camping salt-and-pepper twin is what I use for both cooking and the table. But I've been here for almost seven months now, and it seems odd that it's still pretty full. (Favorite fork pictured for scale, and moral support, because shaker wasn't sure it was ready for its closeup.)
If I were discussing this with my daughter, we might play our "That's Probably It" game. We'd take turns hypothesizing:
Maybe I cook less than I think I do.
Maybe the salt and pepper are especially compacted.
Maybe it's like that curious story in the Old Testament, where a little bit of flour and a little bit of oil keep getting used, but not used up.
Maybe elves.
Maybe the shaker is bigger on the inside.
Maybe my retired microbiologist neighbor, who installed window screens and shined up my crystal doorknobs before I moved in, comes in and touches nothing but this shaker, replenishes it and leaves it exactly where he found it.
And then after a really far-fetched but mutually delighting answer, one of us will say, "That's probably it."
I believe this travel shaker will see me through this month, past the longest darkest night of the year and into January, as the saltshaker of this year empties itself out faster than I was ready for.
And back (or forth) to May 2017. I don't even know where my travel salt and pepper shaker is. Salt these days comes from a grinder of pink Himalayan, and pepper from a Steel City Salt Company grinder of Tellicherry peppercorns.
I did use up a vessel of salt yesterday, a small rectangular Tupperware (actually IKEAware) into which the last of a canister of Morton's had been decanted. It salted the water for the last of a bag of wavy noodles.
It feels good sometimes to know that something might stretch miraculously far, not to have to worry about something running out (even something as easily replenished as salt).
It also feels good sometimes to use something utterly up.